Google Home with local support makes its Singapore debut
The Google Home smart speaker made its debut in Singapore on Wednesday (18 April) at a retail price of $189.
The device, which acts as a voice-activated personal assistant activated, also comes with a handful of localised features for the Singapore market.
Consumers in Singapore can purchase the Google Home and Google Home Mini (priced at S$79) through the newly-launched Google Store for Singapore (store.google.com/sg), and from StarHub, Courts and Challenger retail outlets. The online shop is the first Google e-commerce store in Southeast Asia.
Localised features for Google Home users here include playing news from local news sources, and the ability to talk to chatbots to get information from local companies and services.
For now, connected services include StarHub, OCBC, Singapore Airlines, the National Library Board – which provides book reviews – and public transport directions from Bus Uncle.
The device was launched in the US in November 2016 but has been progressively rolled out globally since last year.
Speaking at a media briefing last Friday (13 April)., vice-president of product management Rishi Chandra said that Google has sold a Home device every second since units started being shipping out in October last year.
“The home is a very natural place to have a different type of interaction paradigm because you want to be hands-free,” he said.
In preparing to launch the device here, Chandra also stressed that understanding the local accent was important to the company’s developers. “Supporting Singlish was important to us,” he said.
“This is why it took some time to launch the Assistant (here) last November. We continue to train the tool through google.com queries using the voice search button, and through Assistant on phone to get better sampling in order to improve the algorithms.
“We’re pretty proud of the Singlish support. We actually think it’s fairly good,” he said.
The device recognises up to six different voices and remembers personalised services based on the number of Google accounts linked to the device.
The Google Home can play music from Spotify or shows from Netflix on command. It also lets users control smart home devices such as the Philip Hue and TP-Link to activate lights, home entertainment systems and air conditioning using voice commands.
Unfortunately, the device still doesn’t understand when you tell it to “off the light”.
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